3 Engineering Jobs With Great Futures

October 12, 2018

Over the last couple of decades, we’ve seen the rise of artificial intelligence. It’s grown exponentially and it’s only getting bigger as we speak.

With this alarming expansion, we’ve started to think about how that is going to affect us in the future and how we live our lives.

One thing is certain, the working world is going to see a pretty massive overhaul. Many jobs being done by people right now are soon going to be taken over by autonomous machines.

This isn’t just limited to computer-based jobs, but also to ones that involve a lot of manual labour too. This includes engineering.

But that doesn’t mean that engineering is going to go away entirely, in fact there’s still many areas of the engineering industry that still offer very promising careers. Here’s three of them:

  1.    Software Engineering

You hear the term software engineering, and the first thing that you think of is someone in an office sitting in front of a computer.

You would naturally assume that this would be one of the first jobs to be taken over AI. Truth be told, some people in these positions might find themselves out of work, but there’s still a future.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that software engineering is still one of the most promising fields in engineering today.

Those machines that we mentioned earlier that are going to be taking over some human-operated jobs, they have to be engineered to work that way.

And that’s where the software engineers come in. Someone is probably always going to have to be there to set things in motion. Machines won’t make themselves.

At least not yet anyway. AI is definitely going to change the landscape of software engineering, but it’s not going anywhere.

Like we said earlier, some software engineers might end up losing their jobs, but the ones that can adapt to the change will not.

Once other industries rely on AI, software engineers are coming to become even more important.

  1.    Aerospace Engineering

If you want to talk about an area on engineering that is on fire right now, you need look no further than aerospace engineering.

Not actually on fire though. Being on fire is not good for any aircrafts, but it’s a booming industry and the sky is quite literally the limit with this one.

We are flying more than ever before. There’s an increasing demand for planes and helicopters with thousands and thousands being built each year.

It’s also an area where there is always room for change. Aeroplanes are improving constantly. With people looking for ways to make them more efficient and durable.

We’re not going to stop flying anytime soon, so this is just an industry where we’re going to keep looking towards the future.

And on top of just planes and helicopters, the Universe itself is the ultimate goal. With how quickly technology advances these days, we’ll go deeper into space sooner rather than later.

The more we learn about the solar system, the more we need to develop our spacecraft. This might sound like science fiction but it will be fact eventually.

And we’re not going to get there without some skilled aerospace engineers leading the way.

  1.    Oil and Gas Engineering

Of the three that we’ve talked about, this might be the one that is most affected by artificial intelligence.

There’s a lot of manual labour involved here and as well as that, it doesn’t have the obvious futuristic promise that aerospace engineering has.

But like we said about software engineering, this is still an industry you can be guaranteed a future in if you’re willing to adapt.

There will be a lot of advanced machinery involved in oil and gas jobs going forward, and so there will be more data generated.

The need for people who are both skilled enough engineers to understand the inner workings of these machines and have an ability to analyze data and manage time will increase.

So the jobs will definitely still be there for oil and gas engineers, they’ll just be different. You’ll have to prepare yourself ahead of time in ways that oil and gas workers didn’t have to before.

Conclusion

Engineering will never go away, but the world is changing, and industries like this one are changing with it.

Some areas of engineering are actually going to grow over the next few decades, and you can get a promising job if you can react to the changes and adapt accordingly.